Abstract:
Challenges of broadening access, escalating cost, maintaining desirable quality
and enhancing meaningful learning experiences in African higher education (HE) have
spurred debates on how to restructure higher education delivery to meet the diverse needs
of heterogeneous learners and adapt pedagogical models to the educational realities of lowincome
African countries. In view of these complexities, Massive Open Online Courses
(MOOCs) have been advanced by Western Consortia, universities and online platform
providers as panaceas for disrupting/transforming existing education models African
universities. MOOCs have been touted as disruptive innovations with the potential to
create new niche markets for HE courses, disrupt traditional models of instruction and
content delivery and create new revenue streams for higher education. Yet academic
elitism which manifests in the exclusive selection of top American universities to develop,
host and deliver MOOCs, MOOC providers’ use of university brand and reputation as
benchmarks for charging recruitment fees on headhunters recruiting MOOC graduates and
their complex business models involving the sale of students’ big data (e.g. learning
analytics) for profit seem to be inconsistent with claims about philanthropic and egalitarian
drive of MOOCs. Drawing on disruptive innovation theory and a review of mainstream
literature on MOOCs adoption in American and African tertiary sectors, this study argues
that behind the MOOC rhetoric of disrupting and democratizing higher education lies the
projection of top academic brands on the marketing pedestal, financial piggybacking on the
hype and politics of academic exclusion.
